Games and Chance in Patrick Modiano’s Writing Cover Image

Jeux et hasard dans l’écriture de Patrick Modiano
Games and Chance in Patrick Modiano’s Writing

Author(s): France Grenaudier-Klijn
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts, Fiction, Studies of Literature, Novel, Comparative Study of Literature, French Literature, Theory of Literature
Published by: Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II
Keywords: Patrick Modiano; games; chance; characterisation; indeterminacy

Summary/Abstract: Many of Patrick Modiano’s novels involve the motif of the game – predicate and space – in the narration, at characterization, thematic and structural levels. The introduction of this minor element – it never reaches the level of a trope – nonetheless informs us both about the novelistic techniques employed by Modiano and about the metaphysical considerations underpinning his writing. As such, a close reading of various episodes articulated around the motif of the game allows us to better understand the methods adopted by the novelist in the development of his characters and in the architecture of his texts. Furthermore, the insertion of the motif of the game allows us to identify and analyse the value given to chance and indeterminacy in all its forms in the Modianian novel, from which a true metaphysics, if not an ethics, of indeterminacy, can in turn be deployed.

  • Issue Year: 2023
  • Issue No: 13
  • Page Range: 184-194
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: French